Psychology

The Queensland Brain Institute has a collection of short articles about memory, the types of memory, how memories form, how they are stored, and how they are affected by age.

This site contains articles reflecting current research on issues related to psychology. These articles either link to original research or references.

You spend weeks studying for an important test. On the big day, you wait nervously as your teacher hands it out. You’re working your way through, when you’re asked to define "ataraxia." You know you’ve seen the word before, but your mind goes blank. What just happened?

Dig into the psychology of how memories are susceptible to false information and why we shouldn’t treat them as truth.

Enter the mind of a bored teenager to discover what happens in the brain when we daydream and find out what purpose it serves.

Explore the Rashomon effect, where individuals give significantly different but equally believable accounts of the same event.

Travel into the brain to see how its network of neurons transmit your thoughts and what factors determine how quickly you think.

Dig into what happens to your brain during adolescence that changes how you value, understand, and connect to friends.

Think back to a really vivid memory. Got it? Now try to remember what you had for lunch three weeks ago. That second memory probably isn’t as strong—but why not? Why do we remember some things, and not others? And why do memories eventually fade? Catharine Young gives the basics on memory and memory loss.

Stress isn’t always a bad thing; it can be handy for a burst of extra energy and focus, like when you’re playing a competitive sport or have to speak in public. But when it’s continuous, it actually begins to change your brain.

The traditional model of our mental function is that first our senses provide data to our brain, which then translates those senses into the appropriate mental phenomena: light into visual images, air vibrations into auditory experiences, etc. But what if that process is actually occurring simultaneously?

How does your brain produce an image of something you’ve never seen? Andrey Vyshedskiy details the neuroscience of imagination.

The human brain is visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain: that the left side controls logic and the right side controls creativity. And yet, this is a myth, unsupported by scientific evidence. So how did this idea come about, and what does it get wrong?

Often people make decisions that are not “rational” from a purely economical point of view — meaning that they don’t necessarily lead to the best result. Why is that? Are we just bad at dealing with numbers and odds? Or is there a psychological mechanism behind it?

This TED video examines the science behind post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Learn how traumatic experiences can linger, causing symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, and negative thoughts that interfere with everyday life.

Explore the theories of human consciousness and the science of how your brain works to create a conscious experience.

Explore how scientists define adulthood, and find out if there’s a specific age at which we reach maturity.

Would you open an umbrella indoors? How do you feel about the number 13? Whether or not you believe in them, you’re probably familiar with a few of these superstitions. But where did they come from? Stuart Vyse shares the weird and specific origins of superstitions.

In the 3rd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. In the years since, we haven't paused in our quest to understand why we dream. And while we still don’t have any definitive answers, we have some theories.